Your Right to Know

For months, Democratic gubernatorial candidate Ed FitzGerald has ripped Gov. John Kasich’s
budgetary moves that led to a net state tax cut of $3 billion.

But the Cuyahoga County executive has not detailed what he would do instead — other than say he
would have different priorities.

Some Democratic insiders say there’s a struggle within the FitzGerald campaign. One side wants
to do something along the lines of keeping at least most of Kasich’s income-tax cuts but shifting
them around so that Ohioans with higher incomes would pay more and those on the lower end would pay
less. But FitzGerald reportedly is fearful that even such a zero-sum rearrangement would earn him
the dreaded “tax hike” moniker that Ohio Republicans have saddled on their opponents for more than
50 years.

Last Sunday’s story about the state Department of Natural Resources by
Dispatch Reporter Laura Arenschield might contain the roots of a campaign issue, some
Democrats are quietly saying.

The agency has handed out more than two dozen “chief’s orders” giving various companies
permission to deal with waste from oil and gas fracking wells. The orders are so dubbed because
they are granted by a division chief of the agency while the state operates without rules on the
facilities.

Patriot Water is one of the companies that won a similar chief’s permission to operate at a
facility near Youngstown. (One difference: Under the standard “chief’s orders,” companies will have
to get a permit once rules are developed; Patriot was “grandfathered” and thus won’t need a new
permit.)

A few weeks after Gov. John Kasich signed the bill last summer authorizing ODNR chiefs to grant
such permissions, five Patriot Water leaders gave Kasich’s re-election campaign $12,000 each — just
shy of the maximum — in an Aug. 12 fundraiser. It was part of almost $100,000 that company
officials have given to state officials in the past couple of years.

Company attorney April Bott of Dublin said the Kasich donations stemmed from a fellow
businessman’s invitation to a fundraiser, and $12,000 was the going rate.

However, the company has had far from a free ride with the Kasich administration. His
Environmental Protection Agency director earlier barred Patriot from dumping treated fracking waste
into the city of Warren’s sewer system — a plan that had been given the go-ahead under the
administration of Democratic Gov. Ted Strickland. Kasich’s administration was sued and lost that
fight, lost another court fight attempting to withhold public records from Patriot, and is being
challenged in the state Court of Claims.

A speech that Gov. John Kasich gave before a joint gathering of five chambers of commerce near
Mansfield was billed as his only “open press” campaign event of last week. However, it was not his
only campaign event in public.

After his noontime talk on Tuesday, the governor headed four exits north on I-71 and wound up
near Ashland at Fin, Feather and Fur Outfitters. Kasich got a tour of the sprawling outdoors store,
including the second floor, where one wall essentially contains only guns and several nearby
shelves are stocked with ammo. Although the store was open for business, the campaign billed the
gathering as a private event for members of a sportsmen coalition.

But local reporters caught wind of the governor’s visit. The
Ashland Times-Gazette reported that about 75 listened in on the store’s main floor as
Kasich touted his pro-gun stance.

“He’s been pro-gun for us, so he has been a good governor for Fin, Feather and Fur; he believes
what we believe in: being able to defend yourself and have the rights,” remarked owner Mike
Goschinski, the paper said. State Sen. Larry Obhof, Republican who represents the area, added, “
There hasn’t been a governor that I can remember in my lifetime who has done more to promote the
Second Amendment.”

Kasich didn’t get the National Rifle Association’s endorsement in 2010; that went to Gov. Ted
Strickland because Kasich supported a 1994 ban on “assault weapons” in the U.S. House.